FPC connectors, dependent upon the requirements in use, have a variety of different designs, such as those disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,078,611, 4,808,113, 4,629,271, 4,684,183 and 3,989,336. All these patents disclose the electrical connector having an insulation casing defining an interior space in which conductive contact terminal members are received, the contact terminal members each having a resilient engaging arm having a contact provided thereon to contact and electrically connect to the FPC. A driver member is provided to move in a linear manner relative to the casing for bringing the FPC into the casing and securing the FPC within the casing to be in electrical engagement with the terminal members. Several disadvantages are found in these known designs of FPC connectors, such as:
(1) In the conventional designs, the driver member is forcibly inserted into the casing in a straight forward movement manner which causes abrasion occurring on the FPC by being contacted with the resilient arms of the contact terminal members. Further, in the conventional designs, a great force is required to overcome the biasing force provided by the resiliency of the arms of the contact terminal members in order to have the FPC move into engagement with the contact terminal members and such a great force may sometimes damage the FPC.
(2) The conventional designs provide resilient arms which act upon the FPC at only one side of the FPC so that a force imbalance occurs and it may result in undesired deformation of the FPC and/or the driver member and thus lead in bad contact engagement between the resilient arms and the FPC. To overcome such a problem, high manufacturing precision or tolerance is required in manufacturing the contact terminal members and this increases the manufacturing cost. Further, since the arms of the contact terminal member require resiliency to accommodate the insertion of the FPC, manufacturing tolerance to meet such strict requirement is critical during manufacturing such contact terminal member and this in turn increases the cost.
(3) In the conventional designs, hook-like retainers are provided on the driver member for securing the driver member to the casing. However, due to the minimization of the electrical connectors, the mechanical strength of the hook-like retainers is meritably decreased and this may cause the retainer to be easy to break during assembly. Further, such conventional retainers also require a great force to mount the driver member to the casing which more or less increases the time required in assembly process. Furthermore, besides the sense of the hands, there is no way for a manufacturing worker to check during the assembly process if the parts are moved to the desired position so that a misalignment or similar operation flaws may occur during assembly and thus result in a flaw product.
It is therefore desirable to provide an FPC connector structure which overcomes the above-mentioned problems.